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Test Verdict: Only 4 Colas “Good”

Every child knows that cola is not one of the healthiest foods. But in addition to the high sugar content, the Stiftung Warentest also found residues of cleaning agents and disinfectants in some samples. Only four colas were rated “good”. EAT SMARTER has the test winner and the loser.

Cola in the test

In its current issue, Stiftung Warentest examined a total of 30 caffeinated drinks from classic to sugar-free: including 29 colas and a cola imitation from Dr. Pepper. Nineteen products were sweetened with sugar, eight more were sugar-free with sweeteners included, and three other soft drinks were sweetened with sugar and sweeteners such as sweeteners. Two organic products were included in the test as an example.

In addition to established branded products, discounter goods were also examined more closely with regard to their sugar content and their declaration, and tested sensory and chemically. The test verdict: Only 4 colas were rated “good”, and the majority received the grade “satisfactory”. For five colas, it was only enough for the rating “sufficient” and two drinks failed completely with the grade “poor”.

The test winner & the loser

These are the top 4 colas in the test. All received the test results “good”:

  1. Coca-Cola Light for 70 cents per liter
  2. Coca-Cola Zero for 66 cents per liter
  3. Freeway Cola Light from Lidl for 26 cents per liter
  4. River Cola from Aldi Nord for 26 cents per liter

The big loser in the Cola test is Pepsi Light: Due to a very high level of chlorate exposure, the product was only rated “poor”. As the Stiftung Warentest reports, the chlorate found could come from cleaning agents and disinfectants. Chlorate was also detected in other colas in this test but in significantly lower amounts.

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Food

Supermarket Only Sells Expired Groceries

Expired food is quickly found in the refrigerator. Supermarkets don’t usually sell them anymore. But in England, there is now a new trend: expired food is given a new chance and is offered for sale!

There is a supermarket in the English city of Leeds that sells expired groceries. The “Sharehouse” offers fruit, vegetables, yogurts, and many other foods that other supermarkets or restaurants would not resell or process.

Every customer pays what he wants

The highlight of Sharehouse: every customer can decide for himself in the store what he pays for the expired groceries. Consumers can find out what is currently being offered and sold via Facebook – from the comfort of their own homes.

The “Real Junk Food Project” – expired food

In England, the recently launched “Real Junk Food Project” has been very well received. Just because a food has exceeded its best-before date does not necessarily mean that it can no longer be eaten.

Here people can make a difference and buy cheap groceries. This project is not only suitable for frugal people, but also for everyone who wants to make a statement against today’s throwaway society and food waste.

Expired groceries are now also in Germany

The founders of “Sharehouse” agree: they want to open more branches. A similar concept already exists in Denmark with the “WeFood” shop. Since 2016, groceries have been offered there with a discount of up to 50 percent.

Now a “leftovers” supermarket has finally opened in Cologne. The supermarket “The Good Food” follows a concept similar to that in England: the end consumer only pays what the food is worth to them. Vegetables, fruit, but also baked goods, and preserves are sold there.

What does the health authority say?

Basically, customers need to be aware that something has expired. That’s why signs are put up in Cologne – the employees also explain to the customer personally. However, this is only the case for the best before date, as this is only a recommendation. Products with a clear use-by date, such as raw fish or raw meat, are not sold there. That would speak against the hygiene regulations.

Would you also like to give something to help reduce food waste? Go ahead and check your fridge. What foods do you buy often but rarely process? Which foods are good to process before they go bad?

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Food

Exotic Fruits: Not Only the Climate Balance is Problematic

Exotic fruits are part of the standard range of every supermarket. Here’s why you should avoid the sweet tropical fruits.

You can buy pineapple, mango and Co. at relatively low prices in almost every German supermarket and discounter. A central ecological problem of the exotic fruits is obvious: the plants come from tropical areas. Accordingly, the fruits are grown in distant countries and imported to Germany. They have to cover long transport routes and consequently have a bad ecological balance.

The CO2 emissions caused by transport get into the atmosphere and continue to drive global warming there. But the contribution to the climate crisis is not the only downside of tropical fruits.

Exotic fruits: list

The following types of fruit are among the best-known tropical fruits that you will find in German supermarkets:

Acai
acerola
pineapple
avocado
bananas
dates
figs
goji berries
pomegranate
guava
jackfruit
persimmon
prickly pear
star fruit / carambola
kiwi
lychee
mango
mangosteen
papaya
Passion Fruit / Maracuja
Pitaya / dragon fruit
Tamarillo / Tree Tomato
tamarind

Exotic fruits: monocultures and pesticides

Farmers grow many exotic fruits in monocultures. This not only damages the structure of the soil, but also makes the plants more susceptible to pests. Farmers are therefore increasingly relying on chemical-synthetic pesticides. Many of these pesticides are suspected of being carcinogenic. Occupational health and safety measures are often neglected.

Machines sometimes still spray the environmental toxins when workers are still in the field. In doing so, you regularly come into direct contact with the harmful substance. And even without direct skin contact, there can be health consequences: according to Deutschland Funk Kultur, harmful pesticides are regularly sprayed in large quantities on pineapple plantations in Cartagena, a port city in Costa Rica. As a result, students in a school near the plantations regularly complained of headaches, skin rashes, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting.

Scientists confirmed that the pesticides were not only found on the plantation itself, but also in dust, hair from livestock and human saliva, among other things, and could be detected.

Rainstorms also ensure that pesticides are flushed from the plantations into water bodies. There they harm animals and plants and ultimately contaminate the groundwater. In communities around the plantations, it is therefore extremely dangerous to health to drink water from the tap.

It is not uncommon for rainforest areas to be cleared for plantations or sensitive ecosystems to be invaded. This promotes the extinction of species, as many animal and plant species lose their habitat.

Tropical fruits: working conditions on plantations

In addition to a lack of occupational safety, there are other labor and human rights violations on tropical fruit plantations. According to an Oxfam report reporting on the cultivation of bananas and pineapples in Ecuador and Costa Rica,…

Employers deliberately do not inform their workers about their rights.
some employees do not receive a copy of their employment contract.
workers have to work up to twelve hours at a time on the plantation to receive the daily minimum wage, which actually applies to an eight-hour day.
pregnancy is often a reason for dismissal without notice.
Employees usually have no social security.
immigrants who do not yet have their own apartment and work in the fields have to live together in a very small space.
Employers do not offer medical care in the event of pesticide poisoning or work-related accidents.

Exotic fruits at cheap prices

Precarious working conditions, environmental toxins, deforestation and long transport routes are behind the relatively inexpensive exotic fruits in European supermarkets. Or in short: exploited people and an exploited nature.

According to Oxfam, German supermarkets should take responsibility for these abuses. After all, it is the German corporations that want to keep lowering the price from suppliers in order to be able to score points with customers with cheap prices. Farmers in the country of origin have to bow to this aggressive price policy.

You can do that!

In order not to support the abuses surrounding the cultivation of exotic fruits, you as a consumer can use:in your purchasing power:

It is best if you eat tropical fruits in moderation. For a good ecological balance, you should prefer regional and seasonal fruit varieties. You can find out which fruit is available when from German cultivation in our seasonal calendar.
Pay attention to organic certified goods when buying! In this way you can be sure that farmers have avoided chemical-synthetic pesticides during cultivation. Seals with particularly strict requirements are Demeter and Naturland.
When buying, also look for trustworthy seals that guarantee compliance with ecological and social standards. You should not only pay attention to the organic, but also to the Fairtrade seal.
Fruits with the Rainforest Alliance seal are also subject to far-reaching social and ecological requirements. Although the seal with the green frog cannot quite keep up with the strict Fairtrade seal or the EU organic seal, it still stands for high social and ecological standards.

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Food

Apple Juice in the Dough: Why Only Naturally Cloudy Direct Juice Performs Well

Stiftung Warentest tested apple juice – with mixed results. Not-from-concentrate juices perform best, most juices are mediocre. The test method misses a major problem.

After orange juice, apple juice is the second most popular juice in Germany: we drink around six and a half liters of it per capita a year – not including apple spritzer. The selection of products in the supermarket is correspondingly large.

Stiftung Warentest has now tasted 26 apple juices and examined them in the laboratory. The result: only six juices – all naturally cloudy not-from-concentrate juices – scored “good”. Most juices are satisfactory, three are fair, and one fails with poor.

Apple juice: Naturally cloudy direct juice convinces in the test

Of the 26 apple juices in the dough, 16 are not-from-concentrate juices. This is juice that is briefly heated and bottled immediately after the apples have been pressed. In the case of juices made from juice concentrate, on the other hand, the pressed juice is processed into a concentrate using heat, which is later diluted back into juice with water and flavorings.

“The test shows that the naturally cloudy not-from-concentrate juices are superior to the juices made from concentrate, especially in terms of taste,” says project manager Janine Schlenker. Apple juice is naturally cloudy, but it can be clarified by centrifuging and filtering. Sometimes gelatine is also used for filtering, which is why such juices are often considered non-vegan.

According to Stiftung Warentest, naturally cloudy juices are also healthier than clear ones because they contain more effective plant substances (polyphenols). These are mainly found in the cloudy matter. However, apple juice contains hardly any natural vitamin C.

Dough winners and losers

Among the six good juices are two organic juices:

Voelkel Demeter apple 100% direct juice
Van Nahmen organic apple juice from meadow orchards
The conventional naturally cloudy direct juices from Edeka and Lidl also do well.

Both the not-from-concentrate juices from Aldi Nord and popular branded juices – such as from Amecke and Pfanner – are only satisfactory in the test.

Among other things, the naturally cloudy juices from Dm Bio and Granini scored “sufficient”. The testers criticized both for a comparatively low aroma content, and for the granini juice also for unclear declarations on the sugar content and alleged CO2 neutrality.

Of the eight organic apple juices in the test, only the two above did well, four others (Aldi Nord, Edeka, Lidl, Rabenhorst) with satisfactory.

The naturally cloudy Alnatura apple juice was the only juice to score unsatisfactory in the test – the laboratory found a high content of ethanol, volatile acidity and acetoin. According to Stiftung Warentest, this indicates inferior quality apples or improper processing. However, the levels are not harmful to health.

Dough ignores pesticides

What you should know: In contrast to the Oko-Test, the “sensory judgement” (i.e. the taste) is rated the most at Stiftung Warentest. The “chemical quality”, on the other hand, only accounts for 15% of the overall assessment.

The laboratory apparently did not check whether there were any pesticide residues. The use of pesticides in apple cultivation is widespread. In 2020, Oko-Test found traces of pesticides in all conventional juices in the apple juice test – in some even several and some particularly problematic.

No pollutants, but not necessarily healthy

After all, the Stiftung Warentest laboratory did not find any other residues or pollutants that were harmful to health, such as mold toxins or germs, in any juice.

However, nutrition experts repeatedly point out that fruit juices are not suitable thirst quenchers. They contain a lot of fructose.

The German Society for Nutrition (DGE) does not even classify fruit juices as drinks, but as fruit and vegetables – because according to the experts, drinks should be “low-energy”. This applies to water and unsweetened teas, but not to juice. In order to be able to more easily implement the recommendation to eat five portions of fruit and vegetables a day, one portion of fruit can be replaced by 200 milliliters of fruit juice, but not every day.

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